Peat Moss - A non-renewable resource

Today is pepper planting day for me. I have mostly hot pepper seeds which will eventually get potted up to 2.5 gallon pots. They will probably spend about half their lives in some sort of protected area such as the Hoop house or a sunken raised bed (that's an oxymoron for ya). The third option is a rectangle of straw bales covered with old window panes. Such trouble for a few hot peppers. If I didn't have such a distain for grocery store produce I would be much better off just buying the peppers, but isn't that what this is all about. Okay, Okay, done philosophizing.

Irrigation systems are pretty much a must here as well. I have a number of soaker hoses and several types of drip feed hoses depending on the applications. Someone started a forum here on irrigation, but I find a lot of the information confusing. I do just about as well with trial and error methods. Tried about half a dozen different brands of drip feed hoses and finally found one I really like. My problem was trying to figure out a way to use a timer with so many different hoses and I finally just gave up. System was too expensive. I simply just operated the ball valves to each of the twenty risers as necessary. A number of the risers have a PVC header pipe which can feed up to four soaker hoses or two drip feed hoses and each of these also has a ball valve for adjustment of feed as necessary. Sounds a bit over whelming, but once I get the multiples adjust I usually don't need to make any changes on them. I water up to four times a day making adjustments on the main riser valves as required. Only takes a few minutes to do this by hand but it works. A the end of the season I can go back to a timer for the remaining plants, mostly covered caged tomatoes, but I only do that if I want to leave town for a couple of days.

I purchased one of those cube makers to make seed planting blocks for planting various seed such as cucumbers, squash, melons, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and some lettuce varieties for transplanting. I figured I would use a mixture of vermiculture media and some freshly soaked and drained (aquarium net to squeeze out the excess water) peat moss. The addition of the peat moss should help hold the blocks together. This way I won't have to mess with trying to remove or cut away the peat pots. I have some planter trays which have 15 2.5-inch square cells which are 1'5-inches deep which can hold the cubes which are 2.25-inches square and 2.25-inches high. Now weather the cubes will hold together with bottom watering is the question. It would be easy to fill the side gaps with some additional germination mix, but the added height might give me some problems. But hopefully it will work.